Pavlensky’s Body in Protest

The image of Petr Pavlensky sitting on the cold, wet cobblestone of Red Square with a long nail driven through his scrotum is shocking and bewildering. What is the performance artist trying to achieve? What does a spike impaling his testicles symbolize? Titled “Nail,” Pavlensky’s installation, which coincided with Police Day, served as a “metaphor for the apathy, political indifference and fatalism of contemporary Russian society.” “It is not bureaucratic lawlessness which deprives society of the possibility to act,” reads a press release, “but the obsession with our defeats and losses which nail us ever more into the Kremlin’s paving stones, creating an army of stuffed dummies patiently awaiting their fate.” “Having forgotten its advantage in numbers,” the statement continues, society’s inaction “brings the triumph of the police state closer.” Pavlensky’shas since been charged with hooliganism which carries a maximum five year prison sentence.

Like many, I too was quick to ridicule Pavlensky’s art. A cock and balls nailed to the ground makes it all too easy to descend into grade school humor. But after I read Masha Gessen’s post on the NY Times, I began to seriously contemplate Pavlensky’s installation. “Each of these actions required the police to deal with Pavlensky’s body — something Russian law enforcement officials almost never have to do, even though they routinely mangle, maim and kill protesters, convicts and perceived violators of rules and laws. Pavlensky uses self-mutilation to point out that the victims of Russia’s policies are human beings of flesh and blood.” I was struck how Pavlensky used his body to alter the power dynamic between the protester and police. But “Nail,” as well as Pavlensky’s other acts of self-mutilating art, points to the centrality of the body in protest.

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Barbara Allen is an associate professor of history at La Salle University where she specializes in the Russian revolutionary movement and the early Soviet regime. Her research interests include the history of working-class opposition to the Soviet Communist Party’s dictatorship. Her most recent book is Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885-1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik which was just released in paperback.

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Since I haven’t been able to comment on the police brutality against the Dissenters March last weekend, I think one of the best reports in the media is Kommersant’s article “Dissenters Crushed.” Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

The police vans were full of people considered by the police to be instigators of the Dissenters’ March. One of them broke a window in the van, and journalists hurled themselves at the narrow opening: “Mr. Kasparov, what do you think of the actions of the police?” asked someone. Garry Kasparov managed to get out only a few words in English [emphasis mine—Sean], among which it was possible to distinguish “Kremlin” and “hell,” before the OMON cut short the interview and drove the press back with truncheons.

“Let him go, he’s fine, he’s just goofing off. He’s not a democrat,” coaxed journalist Viktor Shenderovich upon seeing police detaining a drunk man in a ski cap. “Now he will be,” promised the OMON officer. “Well, that’s true, a few whacks of your truncheon and anyone would turn into a democrat,” sniffed Mr. Shenderovich.

Along the way they encountered People’s Democratic Movement leader Mikhail Kasyanov, two dozen journalists, and around 50 marchers. The demonstrators were immediately surrounded by camouflaged OMON troops. “What’s with the press conference here!?” yelled a burly OMON officer into a megaphone. “Arrest them all! “Fucking journalists or not!” A minute later, after several photographers, a pair of print journalists, and a TV camera operator had been packed into waiting buses, the police went for Mr. Kasyanov. After a short scuffle, however, the former prime minister’s bodyguards managed to fend them off.

“But we don’t need to go to the metro, we’re going the other way,” said former presidential advisor Andrei Illarionov to an OMON officer from Bashkiria in an attempt to reason with him. “You’re violating the constitution!” he charged, pulling a copy of the document from under his coat. In reply, the policeman raised his truncheon threateningly. “Arrest anyone suspicious!” shouted the OMON commander.
“Who’s suspicious?” asked one of his subordinates.
“They all are!”

“Pick these ones up,” ordered the commander, pointing at Oboron (“Defense”) movement coordinator Oleg Kozlovsky and a young woman with red hair.
“Will you also break their legs?” asked a Kommersant correspondent.
“We’ll break your fucking leg,” snarled the officer.
People leaned over their balcony railings in the apartment building next door. “You’re not people, you’re beasts!” cried a middle-aged woman in an apron from the second floor.

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One hundred years ago today, the First International Women’s Congress adopted International Women’s Day as a day of struggle for women’s rights. But in Russia, where the holiday, what was once a day calling for a “struggle against patriarchy,” has in many ways become patriarchy’s reinforcement.